If you want the straight dope about the seriousness of the
alleged global warming problem, beware of the media - namely television.

So concludes a recent study published by the Media Research
Center, a media watchdog group. Although there is considerable
scientific uncertainty about the global warming theory, the study
finds that TV news routinely ignores the many prestigious scientists
questioning the theory while giving generous coverage to global
warming theory proponents.

These stories, airing between January 20 and April 22, 2001,
coincided with President George W. Bush's dramatic decisions to
not regulate carbon dioxide and to scrap the Kyoto treaty, the
Clinton-era treaty that would have mandated economically-drastic
reductions in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

The stories, with the exception of Fox, were overwhelmingly
supportive of environmentalists' claims that human-induced global
warming is underway and will threaten the planet if steps aren't
taken to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Among the MRC's key
findings:

o Views that man-made global warming will cause catastrophic
climate change received six times as much media attention as the
views of scientists who doubt this.

o Networks gave Kyoto supporters more than twice as much airtime
as was given to supporters of Bush's decision to reject Kyoto.

o There were only seven references to the fact that some scientists
are skeptical that human actions are causing global warming.2

While gloom-and-doom coverage makes for dramatic headlines,
it grossly misrepresents the level of scientific skepticism about
global warming.

For instance, TV news rarely mentions that over 17,000 scientists
signed a petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science
and Health, stating: "There is no convincing scientific evidence
that human release of... greenhouse gases is causing or will,
in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's
atmosphere." The signers include 2,100 climatologists, meteorologists
and environmental scientists well-qualified to evaluate the effects
of carbon dioxide on the climate. One prestigious signer is Dr.
Frederick Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences.3

What the public also doesn't understand - and television doesn't
tell them - is that the alarmist global warming reports frequently
cited by the media as scientific support for the dangers of warming
do not reflect a consensus of scientists.

Dr. Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and a participant in the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations (UN) panel
whose conclusions are most often cited as the reason Americans
should believe the global warming theory, accuses the UN entity
of issuing dramatic statements about the alleged impact of man-made
global warming that he and other IPCC participating scientists
do not support.4

For example, the IPCC recently announced that "most of
the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have
been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
But Lindzen says that statement is scientifically indefensible
- there may not have been any significant warming over the last
60 years and such warming that did occur was "inconsistent
with greenhouse warming."5

More revealing and perhaps most ominous is the intimidation
of scientists by IPCC officials. Lindzen says IPCC "coordinators"
often pressure scientists to tone down their criticism of the
climate models that the IPCC uses to make frightening global warming
predictions. Says Lindzen, "I have personally witnessed co-authors
forced to assert their 'green' credentials in defense of their
statements."6

Perhaps the TV networks' biggest disservice to the global warming
debate is that they treat the IPCC as if it were a respectable
scientific body. In fact, the IPCC is nothing more than a government
bureaucracy that needs global warming to stay in business. Lindzen
says that IPCC leaders do not have especially impressive credentials
in climate research but "they are... enthusiasts for a negotiating
process without which" they would be out of a job.7

An international government bureaucracy unethically stoking
public fear of an unproven environmental threat to keep the dollars
flowing. Now there's a story for the evening news - but don't
hold your breath waiting for it.